After much digging through the old project, I've decided it's time to do something I've never ever done before - abandon it and start over. But I'll still be doing it in Unity.

It was one of the first things I did with Unity. The code and asset management is a big old mess. I know things now that I didn't know then, so it doesn't make sense to try putting all the mistakes right - it'll be quicker and cleaner to just do it again. For instance, every type of enemy vehicle has a script that controls all of it. It would make much more sense to have a separate chassis controller (for moving), and a turret controller (for killing). Aside from just keeping things tidy, that'd allow for, for example, a ship with multiple turrets. One of the vehicles I already made (2K22 Tunguska) actually has a primary and secondary weapons system but previously there was no way of implementing both - it had to be one or the other due to the self-imposed one-turret limit.

Obviously I'll hang on to the old code for reference, in case I need it.

Started over and just got finished with the flight controls. Feels a ton better than before, plus I've avoided Unity's Input Manager as it doesn't allow you to change key bindings at runtime which to me, makes the entire thing pointless. Pretty much every game ever lets you redefine keys.

Implementing inertia when turning was a bit of a pain... transforms, vectors, eulers, quaternions.... argh! So I just went old-skool and implemented a bit of sine/cosine maths.

I've also thrown a bit of 'reality' out of the window. The AH-64 apache which my heli is based on has a maximum pitch (without altitude loss) of about 40°. Given that the game is all about close-quarters combat, you'd be launching missiles into the floor at that, so I've had to limit it to 20°. Also limited the top speed to 30m/s (down from 80m/s), because the real max speed would just be silly for this implementation. Altitude is also (currently) limited to 20m - still undecided whether to have 'free' altitude up to that point, or a fixed altitude like Desert Strike had. Having some degree of vertical freedom means I can have hills/details in the terrain to hide behind.

Heli controls now finished! What I've opted for is a "hard deck" - a preset altitude of 8m. When you take off, the helicopter automatically rises to this level. You then can't go below that altitude unless you're hovering over the landing pad, at which point the helicopter automatically lands.

In addition, when you're flying you can still go anywhere between 8m and 20m altitude. I think this gives the player the best of both worlds in that it operates like people would expect, a la Desert Strike, but you have a bit of vertical freedom too. Not really sure why you'd want to go to that height and it might change as development.... develops!

One thing I didn't like was that when the heli lands, it stops rather abruptly. Rather than implement overly-complicated physics just for that, I added a simple animation where the heli body sinks down on the undercarriage before springing back up again slightly. The sequence only runs for one second but it makes the landing look 100% more convincing. Unity's Mechanim is bloody awesome for things like this.

Oh, I've also added code for managing hardpoints. Defaults to standard 8 x Hellfire and 38 x Hydra for now, but I can easily pass parameters to the hardpoint manager to have any configuration.

Yeah. First time around I attempted to speak to a couple of potential publishers. Neither even replied. Good in one way as Mastertronic went tits-up soon after, so, dodged a bullet there. Could have had a right fanny on getting out of a contract with them.

Anyway, when they didn't reply, and I didn't fancy buggering about with Greenlight and casual game portals would definitely not like the cut of its jib, I just thought "sod this", and set up the t-shirt gig.

Looking gobsmackingly good Gfk, I reckons not you're up for 1.4 million sales, I'll host a Web page to further your cause, not that I get many visitors at the mo, doesnae bother me to much.... At the mo.

Best of luck with the self-publishing, it can take a fair bit of effort getting covered by review sites nowadays but if you can get to know some of the reviewers beforehand on social media, etc, it can be a big help getting one-up on the other games on their list!